Derren Brown: Svengali Review

Now, before I begin I want to stress right off the bat that this review will contain minimal spoilers, as I have been sworn to secrecy by the man himself not to give anything away, and no this wasn't some deliberate act of suggestion and I'm not under the influence of any psychological trickery, just so were very clear on that. For those of who have lived in caves for nearly ten years and don't even know who he is, Derren Brown is a 'magician' of sorts, though that is a term I and he would use very loosely. As opposed to most of the garden-variety magicians who rely solely on using the established, tried-and-tested tricks of the trade, Derren's work encompasses a broader spectrum. He fuses degrees of psychology, suggestion, misdirection and obviously a helping of showmanship to achieve his results. A majority of Derren's tricks have more of a psychological bent, and he can seemingly pick up on and interpret the unconscious signals that we give off, as well as subtly manipulate your mind to the extent that he can directly influence your thoughts and very behavior through suggestion and other techniques. It's no wonder he seems to leave his audiences completely dumbfounded and stupefied on every occasion, me now being among them and it's no exaggeration to me to label the man a genius on every level and in every respect. A true master of his craft and to me one of the finest contemporary performers in years.

I first came across Derren's work way back in 2003 with his Channel 4 series Trick of the Mind, though I was too young to really grasp it completely, I was nonetheless intrigued. I had always taken a keen interest in magic from as early as '98 where I used to watch Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed almost religiously on a weekly basis. That was what really started it all for me as a kid, and I eventually went out and bought Magician Kits (sad I know...), and had a gallimaufry of other magic-related accessories and gimcracks and was something of an amateur junior magician in my time, to my two cousins at least anyway, though they were easily impressed and I wasn't about to make a career of it anytime soon as much as I really wanted to. It wasn't until much later in 2007 with his new series Trick or Treat that I was truly under his spell, a spell that still hasn't broke to this day. Spellbound I was to say the least, and from then onwards I was a devotee of Derren, and his already large fan-base only grew every time a new series or television special would come along. The one special which would permanently seal his status forever and subsequent notoriety was undoubtedly Russian Roulette in which he had to accurately predict which chamber the participant had put the bullet in while he fired off all the other remaining chambers with the gun pointed at his head. 

Derren's Channel 4 series Trick or Treat which was first broadcast way back in April 2007, was what started me off and from then on I was completely hooked, I had been 'converted'.

Russian Roulette really did push the envelope and made him a household name. It attracted much controversy at the time, but I think people failed to see it for what it was: pure, unadulterated entertainment that made for some truly fantastic television. I didn't see the original broadcast but when I saw a repeat of it (I forget when) I was amazed, and the climactic few moments was so intense it was literally nail-biting. I know I didn't need to cut my nails for a while after that, my teeth had completely grounded nearly all of them to there bases. Derren's execution (not literally thank god) was sublime and the whole production itself was first-class, had never seen anything like it on TV. Many offered explanations as to how it could have been done, perhaps through NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) which is kind of a pseudo-science based on cognitive and behavioral psychotherapy. Derren after all is a 'mentalist' by definition and relies heavily on psychological manipulation to help disguise his tricks, so its probable that through this technique and the power of suggestion he was able to persuade the contestant to put it into a certain chamber. People have also raised doubts over whether the gun was in fact loaded with a live round due to strict regulations, particularly of a big company like Channel 4 who wouldn't let anyone under any circumstances be harmed. Whatever the reasons or explanations people come up with it's irrelevant really, it was just amazing to watch and he is first and foremost an entertainer.  

After that I went out and purchased his book Tricks of the Mind which is a great read and would recommend it to just about anyone who has ever taken even a casual interest in what he does. I then subsequently bought all his DVD's including the television specials which included the infamous Russian Roulette and three others Séance, The Heist and The System as well as his stage shows: Something Wicked This Way Comes, An Evening of Wonders and Enigma. It would be fair to say I was quite obsessed, but watching Russian Roulette and Trick or Treat only offered a glimpse, a taste if you like of Derren's true brilliance. Séance was absolutely phenomenal, one of his best for sure and even my father who might I add is notoriously hard to impress was quite surprised at how good it actually was. It really did showcase how far he was willing to push boundaries and branch out in directions that I wouldn't have ever seen coming. The Heist raised the bar even further and the sheer scope and ambition of it was awe-inspiring, another jaw-dropping feast from start to finish. Derren never fails to deliver and astound for me and it was only after I watched his stage shows that I knew I just HAD to see this man live and in 2011 that unique opportunity finally came along.

When Russian Roulette was broadcast in 2003 it completely shocked the nation and was one of the most complained about shows in television history, not Derren's intention I'm sure...yeah right.

I actually stumbled upon his new tour Svengali almost by accident, I wasn't even aware he had a tour until late 2011 when I read that someone had been to see him in England somewhere, Manchester I think it was. It was then announced that he would be coming to Cardiff in April for the 2012 leg of the tour and I immediately snapped up the tickets for me and a work mate who was into Derren about as much as I was. I could hardly contain myself when the tickets finally came through the post, April 9th could not come quick enough. Fortunately it did come around quick and before I knew it I was waiting for my friend outside the Millennium Centre. We were both all giddy like a pair of primary school kids, the sheer excitement and anticipation was almost palpable and there was an immediate buzz in the theatre as we took our seats. The place was completely packed out which was no surprise really, about 1,600 of us in all, we couldn't spot a single empty seat. Now we both went in with pretty high expectations already cause we knew all to well what this guy was capable of, we were what you call the 'hardcore' fans if you like. However, actually being there was something else, we more or less had a perfect almost panoramic view of the stage since we were sat in the Upper Circle. 

A view of the Svengali stage from the Dress Circle, not quite sure where this is but it gives you an idea at least, will say no more...

Now as I've stated before I will not be spilling any beans on the show itself, Derren specifically asked us all not to at the beginning and I will stand by that. What I CAN say though is that it completely blew all my expectations, which were already high might I add. Me and my friend were utterly engrossed from start to finish, without a shadow of a doubt his finest stage show to date and for me one of best two and half hours of my life. I was so relieved he didn't pull that trick like in The Gathering by hypnotizing the audience into making them forget the night's events cause that was a show that I would not want to forget cause it was so unforgettable. A mind-boggling, jaw-dropping, rip-roaring thrill ride in every sense. Derren completely outdone himself and to actually see him in the flesh for the first time was amazing in-itself, a dream come true for sure. He is a master showman who oozes charisma and has such an incredible energy and wit on stage that is as sharp as his suits (nice one it was to), or the better comparison would be as sharp as his tricks that left the whole theatre gasping in awe on no less than...can't even remember how many occasions now but it was a lot. I know I shook my head in utter disbelief and amazement numerous times and so did my friend. If you EVER get even the slightest fleeting chance to see his Svengali tour then I wholeheartedly suggest you go see it, it will be one you'll never forget I assure you.

Derren's ultimate goal in my mind has always been to challenge his audiences, and he is constantly testing the waters, offering fresh and new perspectives on what he does. He is not about deceiving people into believing he has some kind of special powers or sixth sense, he is inviting you to make up your own mind and come up with your own interpretations. I mean sure his performances involve some degree of deception in misleading the audience, but he uses this to great effect and we must not forget that he is a showman. In his career he has effectively debunked many paranormal practices that have become well established, particularly mind-reading and mediumship which is still a huge business today. He has pealed away the superficial layers of it all and exposed it for what it is. If you have watched Séance then you'll know what I'm talking about cause that was a real eyeopener for me and I imagine many other people as well. You believe whatever you want to believe but its crystal clear to me now that psychics, mediums, palm-readers and the like are ultimately duping often quite vulnerable people into believing in something that's false. They are in a sense preying on there vulnerability, especially mediums, and giving them a false sense of hope which to me is wrong. It maybe gives them a sense of solace and comfort to know that there loved ones who have passed are still somehow here, but they are being led on.    
 
Anyways, I've watched Something Wicked This Way Comes, An Evening of Wonders and Enigma countless times but Svengali is not only his best but his darkest and most ambitious to date. Yes, there will be some familiar aspects of the show that you would come to expect from Derren, his use of suggestion and other linguistic tricks that have become part of his established repertoire, but even then he still manages to make even that feel fresh and original. It never fails to amaze me how he can accurately interpret every conceivable detail no matter how subtle, he is always bang on the money more or less every time and that is an incredible feat for someone who believes that he himself doesn't possess any 'psychic' ability and even denounces those who claim they do. He is a prominent skeptic and even though his performances incorporate mind-reading and other feats of mentalism that appear on the surface a result of some psychic or paranormal practice, he believes that his tricks fundamentally are grounded in reason and psychology. Derren has never claimed he has any psychic ability and unlike some performers who masquerade as psychics, mediums or having some kind of extrasensory perception, he doesn't. To the point though, Svengali is absolutely sensational, his crowning achievement by far and rather than me constantly waffle in superlatives here (I could go on all day...) you genuinely MUST see it for yourself!

Akhenaten: A 'Heretic' To His People, A Revolutionary Pioneer To All.

Akhenaten the 'Heretic' King, though born Amenhotep IV, he would later change his birth name which meant "the living spirit of Aten".

I have always been fascinated by Ancient Egyptian mythology and culture since a very early age. The sheer richness of it's mythology and the ingenious majesty of it's grand architecture, particularly The Great Pyramids at Giza was what piqued my interest in the beginning. However, it wasn't long before I became completely engrossed in it all and it inevitably led me to delve in deeper. It almost became an obsession of sorts, and I wanted to know everything, every conceivable little detail no matter how insignificant or mundane, there was no stone left unturned. In my relentless quest for knowledge, I stumbled upon Egypt's 'heretic' king Akhenaten, a man who abandoned the traditional polytheistic (belief in many gods) beliefs that the Egyptians had held for centuries in favor of only one god, the 'Aten' or sun disk. It struck me that he was in fact the very first who made this incredibly bold and radical shift from established and incontestable tradition, and yet we still know very little of him or what truly motivated him to forsake conventional polytheism in favor of unorthodox monotheism.  Now, I don't need to point out the obvious similarities here, but I will get round to that later.

What we do know about him is that he was a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty and was the son of Amenhotep III, also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent. His reign of 39 years was a period of exceptional prosperity and artistic splendor at a time when Egypt reached the height of its power. He would be known as the pharaoh who 'beautified' Egypt. Amenhotep III put an emphasis on construction as opposed to conquering other lands like his predecessors, since times were abundant and there was no real danger or threat. He expanded on many existing cities and constructed many temples during his reign including Malkata on the West Bank of the Nile at Thebes, the then capital of the unified Egypt and it was a site dedicated to housing and official chambers. However, his greatest and most noted achievement was the Temple of Amun at Karnak, better known today as the Precinct of Amun-Re which is the largest of the precincts at the temple, and still remains a popular tourist attraction. Amenhotep III died approximately between 1353 or 1351 BC after a reign of nearly 40 years, and his son Amenhotep IV immediately succeeded him and was crowned in Thebes.

The ruins of Amarna or Akhetaten which meant "Horizon of the Aten."

During the early days of his reign, Amenhotep IV was based in Thebes with his wife Nefertiti and his six daughters. In the beginning he permitted the worship of Egypt's traditional gods, however at the Temple of Karnak he decreed several massive buildings including temples to the Aten. The Aten itself was depicted as a sun disc, and was previously unheard of in traditional Egyptian architecture. The relationship between him and the priests of Amun-Re or the established order started to gradually decline and during about year five of his reign, Amenhotep IV took decisive action and eventually took it upon himself to establish the Aten as the sole, monotheistic god of all Egypt as opposed to his early henotheism (belief in one god while still accepting the existence of others). He "disbanded the priesthoods of all the other gods and diverted income from these other cults to support the Aten". To declare his complete allegiance to the Aten, the pharaoh then officially changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten which meant the "Living Spirit of Aten." Akhenaten then soon commissioned the building of Akhetaten (known today as Amarna) which would serve as the new centralized hub for all religious practices in Egypt. 

The pharaoh Arkhenaten giving an offering to the Aten. Notice his rather 'feminine' characteristics which was present in almost all known inscriptions of him.

This radical change must have come as quite a shock to the populace, and no doubt it incited much hostility and widespread indignation across Egypt. The idea that the gods they once revered were now suddenly declared obsolete in favor of just one, this must have been nothing short of heresy. Arkhenaten even went to the extremes of personally ordering the defacing of Amun's temples throughout Egypt, and in many instances he had the inscriptions of the other gods removed all together. To those who aren't as familiar with Egyptian mythology Amun was a patron deity so called 'King of the Gods' and was undoubtedly the most venerable of all the Egyptian gods, particularly in the New Kingdom where he was "greatest expression of transcendental deity In Egyptian theology". Initially, Akhenaten presented Aten as merely a variant of the familiar supreme deity Amun-Re (itself the result of an earlier rise to prominence of the cult of Amun, resulting in Amun becoming merged with the sun god Ra), in an attempt to put his ideas in a familiar Egyptian religious context. However by year nine of his reign, his sheer devotion and allegiance to the Aten became so resolute and immovable he finally declared that Aten was not just the supreme god but the only god, and that he was the sole mediator between the Aten and his people. 

It's no surprise that his death, which is also shrouded in much mystery and speculation, marked the gradual decline of the Aten cult he had originally founded and it was quickly repudiated and fell out of complete favor. His conviction in his monotheistic beliefs and the very concept of a sole god was just too radical for his people to accept or follow and it wasn't long before the order of the old gods was finally restored after his 17 year reign. His later successors, particularly Ay and Horemheb worked tirelessly to remove all trace of the 'heretic' king and his 'legacy' by disassembling temples and monuments that Akhenaten had built, including the one at Thebes. The city of Akhetaten was abandoned and left to ruin by his own son and eventual 'boy king' Tutankhamun, though he was originally born Tutankhaten which meant "Living Image of Aten," he would later change it to Tutankhamun "Living Image of Amun." Later pharaohs would not even acknowledge he existed at all and any depiction of him or the Aten was completely destroyed or its material reused for other monuments, it's like they wanted to erase him completely from history. 

To his people he was branded a 'heretic', but if you look at it in the wider scope of things it's clear that he was undoubtedly the precursor to monotheism. The foundation of three of the world's largest faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam are based on the concept of a single god, a concept that began with Arkhenaten himself almost two centuries prior to the first archaeological and written evidence for Judaism and Israelite culture was even discovered in the Levant. Many have speculated the idea that Akhenaten was the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that later became Judaism. Sigmund Freud himself mentioned in his book Moses and Monotheism, that Moses himself had been an Atenist priest who was forced to flee Egypt with his followers shortly after Arkhenaten's death. Freud argued that Arkhenaten was endeavoring to advance his monotheism further, something that Moses from the Bible was able to achieve. This was an utterly fascinating notion to me and even though I'm not the first to bring up the subject, yet if it managed to mystify and fascinate not only scholars but arguably one of the finest minds of the 20th Century then this was definitely something worth looking into further. I was immediately struck by how much of a debate it was and still is to this day, and there's no denying Arkhenaten's legacy which his people tried so desperately to expunge completely.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam, three of worlds largest faiths are all monotheistic religions, a concept originally established by Akhenaten almost two hundred years prior.

There is no denying Akhenaten's influence on later religions, in fact pottery that was discovered throughout Judea dated almost to the end of the 8th century BC has seals almost resembling a winged 'sun disk' engraved on it's handles. Is this merely a coincidence? Maybe, but I don't think so. Other scholars have even juxtaposed aspects of Arkhenaten's relationship with the Aten to the relationship Jesus Christ had with God - particularly in interpretations that emphasize a more monotheistic explication of Atenism than henotheistic. The Canadian Egyptologist and archaeologist Donald B. Redford added that many have viewed Arkhenaten as a harbinger of Jesus himself. This is certainly feasible since a majority of Jesus's life was completely fictionalized and romanticized in The Bible anyway and that the earliest scribes may have been influenced directly or indirectly by what this Egyptian pharaoh had been expounding to the extent that they plagiarized some elements. Did they essentially pick and choose what to add, what to discard and what to simply build upon? Possible, no one can really know for sure after all most great works of art or fiction take inspiration from earlier sources and Arkhenaten and his relationship with the Aten may have been the muse. Akhenaten even described himself as "thy son who came forth from thy limbs", "thy child", "the eternal son that came forth from the Sun-Disc", and "thine only son that came forth from thy body". Notice the distinct similarity here?

Redford concluded that: "Before much of the archaeological evidence from Thebes and from Tell el-Amarna became available, wishful thinking sometimes turned Akhenaten into a humane teacher of the true God, a mentor of Moses, a Christlike figure, a philosopher before his time. But these imaginary creatures are now fading away one by one as the historical reality gradually emerges. There is little or no evidence to support the notion that Akhenaten was a progenitor of the full-blown monotheism that we find in the Bible. The monotheism of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament had its own separate development—one that began more than half a millennium after the pharaoh's death." That maybe so but it's still a tantalizing prospect that Arkhenaten's legacy may have played a direct role in shaping later monotheistic religions. He has been called by the historian James Henry Breasted and rightfully so "the first individual in history," undoubtedly the first monotheist, by definition you could even say the first scientist and romantic. A man who was steadfast in his convictions, irregardless of what his people thought. He defied convention and tradition and brought about a radicalism that Egypt had never seen and consequently would never ever see again. A true revolutionary who was way ahead of his time.

The English Egyptogolist Flinders Petrie declared that:
If this were a new religion, invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, we could not find a flaw in the correctness of this view of the energy of the solar system. How much Akhenaten understood, we cannot say, but he certainly bounded forward in his views and symbolism to a position which we cannot logically improve upon at the present day. Not a rag of superstition or of falsity can be found clinging to this new worship evolved out of the old Aten of Heliopolis, the sole Lord of the universe.